We will not accept a nuclear North Korea, warns Kerry

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The US pledged yesterday to stand by its South Korean ally and sent another
warship to the region after the North announced that it would restart the
reactor at the heart of its nuclear weapons programme.

John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, used a joint press conference in
Washington with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung Se, to issue a
warning to Pyongyang. “What Kim Jong Un is choosing to do is provocative, it
is dangerous, reckless and the United States will not accept the DPRK \ as a
nuclear state,” Mr Kerry said. He added: “The US will

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The Yongbyon nuclear facility is to be reopened, North Korea said today

April 3 2013 EPA

The Yongbyon nuclear facility is to be reopened, North Korea said today

April 3 2013 EPA

South Korean Army K-55 self-propelled howitzers on manoeuvres today near the border city of Paju

April 3 2013 AP

The Yongbyon nuclear facility, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, North Korea

April 3 2013 EPA

A South Korean K-55 self-propelled howitzer fires during an exercise today

April 3 2013 AP

South Korean soldiers train with gas masks in the border city of Paju

April 3 2013 AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea

April 3 2013 Reuters

South Korea and the United States are engaging in joint military exercises

April 3 2013 AP

Nuclear missiles arcing across the Pacific, mushroom clouds over Tokyo or Los Angeles - the growls emanating from North Korea seem to threaten a conflict of science fictional proportions. But the real danger is of something else - a less dramatic and more localised escalation, fraught with ambiguities, which will test the delicate balance established between the parties to the world's last Cold War conflict.

For all that they are caricatured as "mad", North Korea's leaders are rational after their own fashion, and the course which they are presently steering is a familiar one. Since its economy ground to a halt following the eclipse of its Soviet sponsor in the 1990s, Pyongyang has used bad behaviour as a means of winning aid from the outside world. The results have been mixed; this time around, there is little sign that the tactic will be successful. But none of the countries involved with Korea want a large scale war, North Korea least of all.

It would, without doubt, mean the final end of the Kim dynasty in a blaze of American munitions - and for all his youth, Kim Jong Un knows this. But he also knows - and he knows that his enemies know - that before going under he could inflict intolerable damage, not with nuclear warheads, but with conventional artillery trained on Seoul.

One of Asia's richest cities would be devastated, along with one of its richest economies. The US would find itself sucked into a bloody conflict whose messy aftermath, of guerrilla fighting against fanatical die-hards, could make Iraq look straightforward. The question is how far Mr Kim can go in the shelter of his enemy's fear.

If Kim Jong Un really did bomb a US army base in Guam or South Korea, President Obama would be left with no choice but to wipe him out. But imagine a lesser provocation. Sinking one of South Korea's naval ships or bombing one of its islands, as his late father did in 2010, would meet retaliation, as the South Korean president, Park Geun Hye, made clear today.

But suppose Pyongyang engineered a situation in which the South fired - or could credibly be accused of firing - first, muddying the moral waters and dividing international opinion. Suppose the North Koreans took hostage some of the hundreds of South Korean workers in the Kaesong joint industrial zone - having "discovered" evidence that some of them are spies. In these circumstances, would the US government risk a bloody, unpopular war in a faraway land and all the political risk which that would bring? And without full-blooded US support, would South Korea dare to go it alone?

The tendency to alarm over the current situation is understandable - but it is also an evasion of the true nature of the situation. There is probably not going to be an all-or-nothing war; and there is no sign so far of internal collapse. Instead, the North Koreans will go on, in their stubborn, infuriating way until we make a deal with them - not because it is an attractive solution, but because it is the only bearable one.